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El Salvador: Fighting Drugs with Guns

President Obama's visit to Latin America (March 2011) is supposed to put U.S. relations with its southern neighbors on a different path, one that diverges from the top-down military and trade policies of his predecessors. But while all signs would seem to point toward a new day in U.S.-Latin America relations, a closer look at Obama's drug enforcement and security policies indicates that the more the U.S. stance toward Latin America changes, the more it stays the same.

Statements by several U.S. officials signal Washington's wish to replace the militarized Cold War framework that dominated U.S.-Latin relations with an equally militarized framework rooted in the so-called War on Drugs. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Obama Administration officials have taken to deploying terms like "narcoinsurgency" that fuse drug war adversaries with enemies in the war on terror.

Roberto Lovato looks at how the Administration's proposed drug enforcement and security policies in El Salvador — and across Latin America — represent an attempt by the U.S. to assert new influence through old means: militarization.

He will also examine how this militarization, coupled with El Salvador's culture of violence, has impacted women in El Salvador. New studies indicate that El Salvador now suffers the highest rate of femicide in the hemisphere. Bringing more guns into a culture that's already steeped in violence is likely to worsen the crisis.

President Obama concluded on Wednesday a five-day tour of Latin America, where he had hoped to make news talking about everything from trade to immigration, but where he instead parried questions about U.S. military actions in Libya.

Will Obama apologize for the U.S government's role in funding and backing the regimes responsible for the deaths of Oscar Romero and 80,000 other Salvadorans?

On the 31st anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero by U.S.-trained paramilitaries, Salvadorans look to President Obama for clues to their country's future relationship with the United States.

President Obama wants to put U.S.-Latin America relations on a new path. But his drug and security policies indicate that the more the U.S. stance toward the region changes, the more it stays the same.